Memory management apparatus and method for managing different page tables for different privilege levels

ABSTRACT

An apparatus and method for managing different page tables for different privilege levels. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: a first control register to store a first base address associated with program code executed at a first privilege level; a second control register to store a second base address associated with program code executed at a second privilege level lower than the first privilege level; and address translation circuitry to identify a first base translation table using the first base address responsive to a first address translation request originating from the program code executed at the first privilege level and to identify a second base translation table using the second base address responsive to a second address translation request originating from the program code executed at the second privilege level.

BACKGROUND Field of the Invention

The embodiments of the invention relate generally to the field ofcomputer processors. More particularly, the embodiments relate to amemory management apparatus and method for managing different pagetables for different privilege levels.

Description of the Related Art

In current processors, a virtual address is translated to a physicaladdress using a set of page tables managed by the processor's addresstranslation circuitry. A pointer stored in one or more control registers(e.g., a CR3 register) points to a base translation table and differentportions of the virtual address are used to identify different levels oftranslation tables to generate the physical address.

In current implementations, translation information for less privilegedand more privileged pages reside in the same page tables. As a result,it is possible for less privileged software to indirectly accesstranslation information for more privileged pages, even speculatively.In addition, changing interpretation of page tables (e.g. from 4-levelto 5-level paging) requires disabling paging protections within theoperating system, opening time windows where the primary memoryprotection capability is disabled. Moreover, because the process contextID (PCID) is stored in the page table base register (e.g., CR3), it islimited to only 12 bits.

Finally, in current implementations, recursive page tables can only usethe lower four entries of the 8-entry page attribute table (PAT) becausethe upper bit of the PAT selector at the leaf level overlaps with thelarge page bit at the upper levels.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

A better understanding of the present invention can be obtained from thefollowing detailed description in conjunction with the followingdrawings, in which:

FIGS. 1A and 1B are block diagrams illustrating a generic vectorfriendly instruction format and instruction templates thereof accordingto embodiments of the invention;

FIGS. 2A-C are block diagrams illustrating an exemplary VEX instructionformat according to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a register architecture according to oneembodiment of the invention; and

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary in-orderfetch, decode, retire pipeline and an exemplary register renaming,out-of-order issue/execution pipeline according to embodiments of theinvention;

FIG. 4B is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary embodiment ofan in-order fetch, decode, retire core and an exemplary registerrenaming, out-of-order issue/execution architecture core to be includedin a processor according to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of a single processor core, along with itsconnection to an on-die interconnect network;

FIG. 5B illustrates an expanded view of part of the processor core inFIG. 5A according to embodiments of the invention;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a single core processor and a multicoreprocessor with integrated memory controller and graphics according toembodiments of the invention;

FIG. 7 illustrates a block diagram of a system in accordance with oneembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 illustrates a block diagram of a second system in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 9 illustrates a block diagram of a third system in accordance withan embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 10 illustrates a block diagram of a system on a chip (SoC) inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 11 illustrates a block diagram contrasting the use of a softwareinstruction converter to convert binary instructions in a sourceinstruction set to binary instructions in a target instruction setaccording to embodiments of the invention;

FIGS. 12A-B illustrate processor architectures on which embodiments ofthe invention may be implemented;

FIG. 13 illustrates one embodiment in which different page tables aremanaged for different privilege levels;

FIG. 14 illustrates one embodiment of a translation lookaside buffer(TLB) for storing context identifiers for user privileged contexts and asupervisor privileged context;

FIG. 15 illustrates an example of a 4-level translation tablearrangement;

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of a 5-level translation tablearrangement;

FIG. 17 illustrates a method in accordance with one embodiment of theinvention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, for the purposes of explanation, numerousspecific details are set forth in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the embodiments of the invention described below. Itwill be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that theembodiments of the invention may be practiced without some of thesespecific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devicesare shown in block diagram form to avoid obscuring the underlyingprinciples of the embodiments of the invention.

Exemplary Processor Architectures, Instruction Formats, and Data Types

An instruction set includes one or more instruction formats. A giveninstruction format defines various fields (number of bits, location ofbits) to specify, among other things, the operation to be performed(opcode) and the operand(s) on which that operation is to be performed.Some instruction formats are further broken down though the definitionof instruction templates (or subformats). For example, the instructiontemplates of a given instruction format may be defined to have differentsubsets of the instruction format's fields (the included fields aretypically in the same order, but at least some have different bitpositions because there are less fields included) and/or defined to havea given field interpreted differently. Thus, each instruction of an ISAis expressed using a given instruction format (and, if defined, in agiven one of the instruction templates of that instruction format) andincludes fields for specifying the operation and the operands. Forexample, an exemplary ADD instruction has a specific opcode and aninstruction format that includes an opcode field to specify that opcodeand operand fields to select operands (source1/destination and source2);and an occurrence of this ADD instruction in an instruction stream willhave specific contents in the operand fields that select specificoperands.

Embodiments of the instruction(s) described herein may be embodied indifferent formats. Additionally, exemplary systems, architectures, andpipelines are detailed below. Embodiments of the instruction(s) may beexecuted on such systems, architectures, and pipelines, but are notlimited to those detailed.

Generic Vector Friendly Instruction Format

A vector friendly instruction format is an instruction format that issuited for vector instructions (e.g., there are certain fields specificto vector operations). While embodiments are described in which bothvector and scalar operations are supported through the vector friendlyinstruction format, alternative embodiments use only vector operationsthe vector friendly instruction format.

FIGS. 1A-1B are block diagrams illustrating a generic vector friendlyinstruction format and instruction templates thereof according toembodiments of the invention. FIG. 1A is a block diagram illustrating ageneric vector friendly instruction format and class A instructiontemplates thereof according to embodiments of the invention; while FIG.1B is a block diagram illustrating the generic vector friendlyinstruction format and class B instruction templates thereof accordingto embodiments of the invention. Specifically, a generic vector friendlyinstruction format 100 for which are defined class A and class Binstruction templates, both of which include no memory access 105instruction templates and memory access 120 instruction templates. Theterm generic in the context of the vector friendly instruction formatrefers to the instruction format not being tied to any specificinstruction set.

While embodiments of the invention will be described in which the vectorfriendly instruction format supports the following: a 64 byte vectoroperand length (or size) with 32 bit (4 byte) or 64 bit (8 byte) dataelement widths (or sizes) (and thus, a 64 byte vector consists of either16 doubleword-size elements or alternatively, 8 quadword-size elements);a 64 byte vector operand length (or size) with 16 bit (2 byte) or 8 bit(1 byte) data element widths (or sizes); a 32 byte vector operand length(or size) with 32 bit (4 byte), 64 bit (8 byte), 16 bit (2 byte), or 8bit (1 byte) data element widths (or sizes); and a 16 byte vectoroperand length (or size) with 32 bit (4 byte), 64 bit (8 byte), 16 bit(2 byte), or 8 bit (1 byte) data element widths (or sizes); alternativeembodiments may support more, less and/or different vector operand sizes(e.g., 256 byte vector operands) with more, less, or different dataelement widths (e.g., 128 bit (16 byte) data element widths).

The class A instruction templates in FIG. 1A include: 1) within the nomemory access 105 instruction templates there is shown a no memoryaccess, full round control type operation 110 instruction template and ano memory access, data transform type operation 115 instructiontemplate; and 2) within the memory access 120 instruction templatesthere is shown a memory access, temporal 125 instruction template and amemory access, non-temporal 130 instruction template. The class Binstruction templates in FIG. 1B include: 1) within the no memory access105 instruction templates there is shown a no memory access, write maskcontrol, partial round control type operation 112 instruction templateand a no memory access, write mask control, vsize type operation 117instruction template; and 2) within the memory access 120 instructiontemplates there is shown a memory access, write mask control 127instruction template.

The generic vector friendly instruction format 100 includes thefollowing fields listed below in the order illustrated in FIGS. 1A-1B.

Format field 140—a specific value (an instruction format identifiervalue) in this field uniquely identifies the vector friendly instructionformat, and thus occurrences of instructions in the vector friendlyinstruction format in instruction streams. As such, this field isoptional in the sense that it is not needed for an instruction set thathas only the generic vector friendly instruction format.

Base operation field 142—its content distinguishes different baseoperations.

Register index field 144—its content, directly or through addressgeneration, specifies the locations of the source and destinationoperands, be they in registers or in memory. These include a sufficientnumber of bits to select N registers from a P×Q (e.g. 32×512, 16×128,32×1024, 64×1024) register file. While in one embodiment N may be up tothree sources and one destination register, alternative embodiments maysupport more or less sources and destination registers (e.g., maysupport up to two sources where one of these sources also acts as thedestination, may support up to three sources where one of these sourcesalso acts as the destination, may support up to two sources and onedestination).

Modifier field 146—its content distinguishes occurrences of instructionsin the generic vector instruction format that specify memory access fromthose that do not; that is, between no memory access 105 instructiontemplates and memory access 120 instruction templates. Memory accessoperations read and/or write to the memory hierarchy (in some casesspecifying the source and/or destination addresses using values inregisters), while non-memory access operations do not (e.g., the sourceand destinations are registers). While in one embodiment this field alsoselects between three different ways to perform memory addresscalculations, alternative embodiments may support more, less, ordifferent ways to perform memory address calculations.

Augmentation operation field 150—its content distinguishes which one ofa variety of different operations to be performed in addition to thebase operation. This field is context specific. In one embodiment of theinvention, this field is divided into a class field 168, an alpha field152, and a beta field 154. The augmentation operation field 150 allowscommon groups of operations to be performed in a single instructionrather than 2, 3, or 4 instructions.

Scale field 160—its content allows for the scaling of the index field'scontent for memory address generation (e.g., for address generation thatuses 2^(scale)*index+base).

Displacement Field 162A—its content is used as part of memory addressgeneration (e.g., for address generation that uses2^(scale)*index+base+displacement).

Displacement Factor Field 162B (note that the juxtaposition ofdisplacement field 162A directly over displacement factor field 162Bindicates one or the other is used)—its content is used as part ofaddress generation; it specifies a displacement factor that is to bescaled by the size of a memory access (N)—where N is the number of bytesin the memory access (e.g., for address generation that uses2^(scale)*index+base+scaled displacement). Redundant low-order bits areignored and hence, the displacement factor field's content is multipliedby the memory operands total size (N) in order to generate the finaldisplacement to be used in calculating an effective address. The valueof N is determined by the processor hardware at runtime based on thefull opcode field 174 (described later herein) and the data manipulationfield 154C. The displacement field 162A and the displacement factorfield 162B are optional in the sense that they are not used for the nomemory access 105 instruction templates and/or different embodiments mayimplement only one or none of the two.

Data element width field 164—its content distinguishes which one of anumber of data element widths is to be used (in some embodiments for allinstructions; in other embodiments for only some of the instructions).This field is optional in the sense that it is not needed if only onedata element width is supported and/or data element widths are supportedusing some aspect of the opcodes.

Write mask field 170—its content controls, on a per data elementposition basis, whether that data element position in the destinationvector operand reflects the result of the base operation andaugmentation operation. Class A instruction templates supportmerging-writemasking, while class B instruction templates support bothmerging- and zeroing-writemasking. When merging, vector masks allow anyset of elements in the destination to be protected from updates duringthe execution of any operation (specified by the base operation and theaugmentation operation); in other one embodiment, preserving the oldvalue of each element of the destination where the corresponding maskbit has a 0. In contrast, when zeroing vector masks allow any set ofelements in the destination to be zeroed during the execution of anyoperation (specified by the base operation and the augmentationoperation); in one embodiment, an element of the destination is set to 0when the corresponding mask bit has a 0 value. A subset of thisfunctionality is the ability to control the vector length of theoperation being performed (that is, the span of elements being modified,from the first to the last one); however, it is not necessary that theelements that are modified be consecutive. Thus, the write mask field170 allows for partial vector operations, including loads, stores,arithmetic, logical, etc. While embodiments of the invention aredescribed in which the write mask field's 170 content selects one of anumber of write mask registers that contains the write mask to be used(and thus the write mask field's 170 content indirectly identifies thatmasking to be performed), alternative embodiments instead or additionalallow the mask write field's 170 content to directly specify the maskingto be performed.

Immediate field 172—its content allows for the specification of animmediate. This field is optional in the sense that is it not present inan implementation of the generic vector friendly format that does notsupport immediate and it is not present in instructions that do not usean immediate.

Class field 168—its content distinguishes between different classes ofinstructions. With reference to FIGS. 1A-B, the contents of this fieldselect between class A and class B instructions. In FIGS. 1A-B, roundedcorner squares are used to indicate a specific value is present in afield (e.g., class A 168A and class B 168B for the class field 168respectively in FIGS. 1A-B).

Instruction Templates of Class A

In the case of the non-memory access 105 instruction templates of classA, the alpha field 152 is interpreted as an RS field 152A, whose contentdistinguishes which one of the different augmentation operation typesare to be performed (e.g., round 152A.1 and data transform 152A.2 arerespectively specified for the no memory access, round type operation110 and the no memory access, data transform type operation 115instruction templates), while the beta field 154 distinguishes which ofthe operations of the specified type is to be performed. In the nomemory access 105 instruction templates, the scale field 160, thedisplacement field 162A, and the displacement scale filed 162B are notpresent.

No-Memory Access Instruction Templates—Full Round Control Type Operation

In the no memory access full round control type operation 110instruction template, the beta field 154 is interpreted as a roundcontrol field 154A, whose content(s) provide static rounding. While inthe described embodiments of the invention the round control field 154Aincludes a suppress all floating point exceptions (SAE) field 156 and around operation control field 158, alternative embodiments may supportmay encode both these concepts into the same field or only have one orthe other of these concepts/fields (e.g., may have only the roundoperation control field 158).

SAE field 156—its content distinguishes whether or not to disable theexception event reporting; when the SAE field's 156 content indicatessuppression is enabled, a given instruction does not report any kind offloating-point exception flag and does not raise any floating pointexception handler.

Round operation control field 158—its content distinguishes which one ofa group of rounding operations to perform (e.g., Round-up, Round-down,Round-towards-zero and Round-to-nearest). Thus, the round operationcontrol field 158 allows for the changing of the rounding mode on a perinstruction basis. In one embodiment of the invention where a processorincludes a control register for specifying rounding modes, the roundoperation control field's 150 content overrides that register value.

No Memory Access Instruction Templates—Data Transform Type Operation

In the no memory access data transform type operation 115 instructiontemplate, the beta field 154 is interpreted as a data transform field154B, whose content distinguishes which one of a number of datatransforms is to be performed (e.g., no data transform, swizzle,broadcast).

In the case of a memory access 120 instruction template of class A, thealpha field 152 is interpreted as an eviction hint field 152B, whosecontent distinguishes which one of the eviction hints is to be used (inFIG. 1A, temporal 1526.1 and non-temporal 1526.2 are respectivelyspecified for the memory access, temporal 125 instruction template andthe memory access, non-temporal 130 instruction template), while thebeta field 154 is interpreted as a data manipulation field 154C, whosecontent distinguishes which one of a number of data manipulationoperations (also known as primitives) is to be performed (e.g., nomanipulation; broadcast; up conversion of a source; and down conversionof a destination). The memory access 120 instruction templates includethe scale field 160, and optionally the displacement field 162A or thedisplacement scale field 162B.

Vector memory instructions perform vector loads from and vector storesto memory, with conversion support. As with regular vector instructions,vector memory instructions transfer data from/to memory in a dataelement-wise fashion, with the elements that are actually transferred isdictated by the contents of the vector mask that is selected as thewrite mask.

Memory Access Instruction Templates—Temporal

Temporal data is data likely to be reused soon enough to benefit fromcaching. This is, however, a hint, and different processors mayimplement it in different ways, including ignoring the hint entirely.

Memory Access Instruction Templates—Non-Temporal

Non-temporal data is data unlikely to be reused soon enough to benefitfrom caching in the 1st-level cache and should be given priority foreviction. This is, however, a hint, and different processors mayimplement it in different ways, including ignoring the hint entirely.

Instruction Templates of Class B

In the case of the instruction templates of class B, the alpha field 152is interpreted as a write mask control (Z) field 152C, whose contentdistinguishes whether the write masking controlled by the write maskfield 170 should be a merging or a zeroing.

In the case of the non-memory access 105 instruction templates of classB, part of the beta field 154 is interpreted as an RL field 157A, whosecontent distinguishes which one of the different augmentation operationtypes are to be performed (e.g., round 157A.1 and vector length (VSIZE)157A.2 are respectively specified for the no memory access, write maskcontrol, partial round control type operation 112 instruction templateand the no memory access, write mask control, VSIZE type operation 117instruction template), while the rest of the beta field 154distinguishes which of the operations of the specified type is to beperformed. In the no memory access 105 instruction templates, the scalefield 160, the displacement field 162A, and the displacement scale filed162B are not present.

In the no memory access, write mask control, partial round control typeoperation 110 instruction template, the rest of the beta field 154 isinterpreted as a round operation field 159A and exception eventreporting is disabled (a given instruction does not report any kind offloating-point exception flag and does not raise any floating pointexception handler).

Round operation control field 159A—just as round operation control field158, its content distinguishes which one of a group of roundingoperations to perform (e.g., Round-up, Round-down, Round-towards-zeroand Round-to-nearest). Thus, the round operation control field 159Aallows for the changing of the rounding mode on a per instruction basis.In one embodiment of the invention where a processor includes a controlregister for specifying rounding modes, the round operation controlfield's 150 content overrides that register value.

In the no memory access, write mask control, VSIZE type operation 117instruction template, the rest of the beta field 154 is interpreted as avector length field 159B, whose content distinguishes which one of anumber of data vector lengths is to be performed on (e.g., 128, 256, or512 byte).

In the case of a memory access 120 instruction template of class B, partof the beta field 154 is interpreted as a broadcast field 157B, whosecontent distinguishes whether or not the broadcast type datamanipulation operation is to be performed, while the rest of the betafield 154 is interpreted the vector length field 159B. The memory access120 instruction templates include the scale field 160, and optionallythe displacement field 162A or the displacement scale field 162B.

With regard to the generic vector friendly instruction format 100, afull opcode field 174 is shown including the format field 140, the baseoperation field 142, and the data element width field 164. While oneembodiment is shown where the full opcode field 174 includes all ofthese fields, the full opcode field 174 includes less than all of thesefields in embodiments that do not support all of them. The full opcodefield 174 provides the operation code (opcode).

The augmentation operation field 150, the data element width field 164,and the write mask field 170 allow these features to be specified on aper instruction basis in the generic vector friendly instruction format.

The combination of write mask field and data element width field createtyped instructions in that they allow the mask to be applied based ondifferent data element widths.

The various instruction templates found within class A and class B arebeneficial in different situations. In some embodiments of theinvention, different processors or different cores within a processormay support only class A, only class B, or both classes. For instance, ahigh performance general purpose out-of-order core intended forgeneral-purpose computing may support only class B, a core intendedprimarily for graphics and/or scientific (throughput) computing maysupport only class A, and a core intended for both may support both (ofcourse, a core that has some mix of templates and instructions from bothclasses but not all templates and instructions from both classes iswithin the purview of the invention). Also, a single processor mayinclude multiple cores, all of which support the same class or in whichdifferent cores support different class. For instance, in a processorwith separate graphics and general purpose cores, one of the graphicscores intended primarily for graphics and/or scientific computing maysupport only class A, while one or more of the general purpose cores maybe high performance general purpose cores with out of order executionand register renaming intended for general-purpose computing thatsupport only class B. Another processor that does not have a separategraphics core, may include one more general purpose in-order orout-of-order cores that support both class A and class B. Of course,features from one class may also be implement in the other class indifferent embodiments of the invention. Programs written in a high levellanguage would be put (e.g., just in time compiled or staticallycompiled) into an variety of different executable forms, including: 1) aform having only instructions of the class(es) supported by the targetprocessor for execution; or 2) a form having alternative routineswritten using different combinations of the instructions of all classesand having control flow code that selects the routines to execute basedon the instructions supported by the processor which is currentlyexecuting the code.

VEX Instruction Format

VEX encoding allows instructions to have more than two operands, andallows SIMD vector registers to be longer than 28 bits. The use of a VEXprefix provides for three-operand (or more) syntax. For example,previous two-operand instructions performed operations such as A=A+B,which overwrites a source operand. The use of a VEX prefix enablesoperands to perform nondestructive operations such as A=B+C.

FIG. 2A illustrates an exemplary AVX instruction format including a VEXprefix 202, real opcode field 230, Mod R/M byte 240, SIB byte 250,displacement field 262, and IMM8 272. FIG. 2B illustrates which fieldsfrom FIG. 2A make up a full opcode field 274 and a base operation field241. FIG. 2C illustrates which fields from FIG. 2A make up a registerindex field 244.

VEX Prefix (Bytes 0-2) 202 is encoded in a three-byte form. The firstbyte is the Format Field 290 (VEX Byte 0, bits [7:0]), which contains anexplicit C4 byte value (the unique value used for distinguishing the C4instruction format). The second-third bytes (VEX Bytes 1-2) include anumber of bit fields providing specific capability. Specifically, REXfield 205 (VEX Byte 1, bits [7-5]) consists of a VEX.R bit field (VEXByte 1, bit [7]-R), VEX.X bit field (VEX byte 1, bit [6]-X), and VEX.Bbit field (VEX byte 1, bit[5]-B). Other fields of the instructionsencode the lower three bits of the register indexes as is known in theart (rrr, xxx, and bbb), so that Rrrr, Xxxx, and Bbbb may be formed byadding VEX.R, VEX.X, and VEX.B. Opcode map field 215 (VEX byte 1, bits[4:0]-mmmmm) includes content to encode an implied leading opcode byte.W Field 264 (VEX byte 2, bit [7]-W)—is represented by the notationVEX.W, and provides different functions depending on the instruction.The role of VEX.vvvv 220 (VEX Byte 2, bits [6:3]-vvvv) may include thefollowing: 1) VEX.vvvv encodes the first source register operand,specified in inverted (1s complement) form and is valid for instructionswith 2 or more source operands; 2) VEX.vvvv encodes the destinationregister operand, specified in 1s complement form for certain vectorshifts; or 3) VEX.vvvv does not encode any operand, the field isreserved and should contain 1111b. If VEX.L 268 Size field (VEX byte 2,bit [2]-L)=0, it indicates 28 bit vector; if VEX.L=1, it indicates 256bit vector. Prefix encoding field 225 (VEX byte 2, bits [1:0]-pp)provides additional bits for the base operation field 241.

Real Opcode Field 230 (Byte 3) is also known as the opcode byte. Part ofthe opcode is specified in this field.

MOD R/M Field 240 (Byte 4) includes MOD field 242 (bits [7-6]), Regfield 244 (bits [5-3]), and R/M field 246 (bits [2-0]). The role of Regfield 244 may include the following: encoding either the destinationregister operand or a source register operand (the rrr of Rrrr), or betreated as an opcode extension and not used to encode any instructionoperand. The role of R/M field 246 may include the following: encodingthe instruction operand that references a memory address, or encodingeither the destination register operand or a source register operand.

Scale, Index, Base (SIB)—The content of Scale field 250 (Byte 5)includes SS252 (bits [7-6]), which is used for memory addressgeneration. The contents of SIB.xxx 254 (bits [5-3]) and SIB.bbb 256(bits [2-0]) have been previously referred to with regard to theregister indexes Xxxx and Bbbb.

The Displacement Field 262 and the immediate field (IMM8) 272 containdata.

Exemplary Register Architecture

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a register architecture 300 according toone embodiment of the invention. In the embodiment illustrated, thereare 32 vector registers 310 that are 512 bits wide; these registers arereferenced as zmm0 through zmm31. The lower order 256 bits of the lower6 zmm registers are overlaid on registers ymm0-15. The lower order 128bits of the lower 6 zmm registers (the lower order 128 bits of the ymmregisters) are overlaid on registers xmm0-15.

General-purpose registers 325—in the embodiment illustrated, there aresixteen 64-bit general-purpose registers that are used along with theexisting x86 addressing modes to address memory operands. Theseregisters are referenced by the names RAX, RBX, RCX, RDX, RBP, RSI, RDI,RSP, and R8 through R15.

Scalar floating point stack register file (x87 stack) 345, on which isaliased the MMX packed integer flat register file 350—in the embodimentillustrated, the x87 stack is an eight-element stack used to performscalar floating-point operations on 32/64/80-bit floating point datausing the x87 instruction set extension; while the MMX registers areused to perform operations on 64-bit packed integer data, as well as tohold operands for some operations performed between the MMX and XMMregisters.

Alternative embodiments of the invention may use wider or narrowerregisters. Additionally, alternative embodiments of the invention mayuse more, less, or different register files and registers.

Exemplary Core Architectures, Processors, and Computer Architectures

Processor cores may be implemented in different ways, for differentpurposes, and in different processors. For instance, implementations ofsuch cores may include: 1) a general purpose in-order core intended forgeneral-purpose computing; 2) a high performance general purposeout-of-order core intended for general-purpose computing; 3) a specialpurpose core intended primarily for graphics and/or scientific(throughput) computing. Implementations of different processors mayinclude: 1) a CPU including one or more general purpose in-order coresintended for general-purpose computing and/or one or more generalpurpose out-of-order cores intended for general-purpose computing; and2) a coprocessor including one or more special purpose cores intendedprimarily for graphics and/or scientific (throughput). Such differentprocessors lead to different computer system architectures, which mayinclude: 1) the coprocessor on a separate chip from the CPU; 2) thecoprocessor on a separate die in the same package as a CPU; 3) thecoprocessor on the same die as a CPU (in which case, such a coprocessoris sometimes referred to as special purpose logic, such as integratedgraphics and/or scientific (throughput) logic, or as special purposecores); and 4) a system on a chip that may include on the same die thedescribed CPU (sometimes referred to as the application core(s) orapplication processor(s)), the above described coprocessor, andadditional functionality. Exemplary core architectures are describednext, followed by descriptions of exemplary processors and computerarchitectures. Detailed herein are circuits (units) that compriseexemplary cores, processors, etc.

Exemplary Core Architectures

FIG. 4A is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary in-orderpipeline and an exemplary register renaming, out-of-orderissue/execution pipeline according to embodiments of the invention. FIG.4B is a block diagram illustrating both an exemplary embodiment of anin-order architecture core and an exemplary register renaming,out-of-order issue/execution architecture core to be included in aprocessor according to embodiments of the invention. The solid linedboxes in FIGS. 4A-B illustrate the in-order pipeline and in-order core,while the optional addition of the dashed lined boxes illustrates theregister renaming, out-of-order issue/execution pipeline and core. Giventhat the in-order aspect is a subset of the out-of-order aspect, theout-of-order aspect will be described.

In FIG. 4A, a processor pipeline 400 includes a fetch stage 402, alength decode stage 404, a decode stage 406, an allocation stage 408, arenaming stage 410, a scheduling (also known as a dispatch or issue)stage 412, a register read/memory read stage 414, an execute stage 416,a write back/memory write stage 418, an exception handling stage 422,and a commit stage 424.

FIG. 4B shows processor core 490 including a front end unit 430 coupledto an execution engine unit 450, and both are coupled to a memory unit470. The core 490 may be a reduced instruction set computing (RISC)core, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) core, a very longinstruction word (VLIW) core, or a hybrid or alternative core type. Asyet another option, the core 490 may be a special-purpose core, such as,for example, a network or communication core, compression engine,coprocessor core, general purpose computing graphics processing unit(GPGPU) core, graphics core, or the like.

The front end unit 430 includes a branch prediction unit 432 coupled toan instruction cache unit 434, which is coupled to an instructiontranslation lookaside buffer (TLB) 436, which is coupled to aninstruction fetch unit 438, which is coupled to a decode unit 440. Thedecode unit 440 (or decoder) may decode instructions, and generate as anoutput one or more micro-operations, micro-code entry points,microinstructions, other instructions, or other control signals, whichare decoded from, or which otherwise reflect, or are derived from, theoriginal instructions. The decode unit 440 may be implemented usingvarious different mechanisms. Examples of suitable mechanisms include,but are not limited to, look-up tables, hardware implementations,programmable logic arrays (PLAs), microcode read only memories (ROMs),etc. In one embodiment, the core 490 includes a microcode ROM or othermedium that stores microcode for certain macroinstructions (e.g., indecode unit 440 or otherwise within the front end unit 430). The decodeunit 440 is coupled to a rename/allocator unit 452 in the executionengine unit 450.

The execution engine unit 450 includes the rename/allocator unit 452coupled to a retirement unit 454 and a set of one or more schedulerunit(s) 456. The scheduler unit(s) 456 represents any number ofdifferent schedulers, including reservations stations, centralinstruction window, etc. The scheduler unit(s) 456 is coupled to thephysical register file(s) unit(s) 458. Each of the physical registerfile(s) units 458 represents one or more physical register files,different ones of which store one or more different data types, such asscalar integer, scalar floating point, packed integer, packed floatingpoint, vector integer, vector floating point, status (e.g., aninstruction pointer that is the address of the next instruction to beexecuted), etc. In one embodiment, the physical register file(s) unit458 comprises a vector registers unit and a scalar registers unit. Theseregister units may provide architectural vector registers, vector maskregisters, and general purpose registers. The physical register file(s)unit(s) 458 is overlapped by the retirement unit 454 to illustratevarious ways in which register renaming and out-of-order execution maybe implemented (e.g., using a reorder buffer(s) and a retirementregister file(s); using a future file(s), a history buffer(s), and aretirement register file(s); using a register maps and a pool ofregisters; etc.). The retirement unit 454 and the physical registerfile(s) unit(s) 458 are coupled to the execution cluster(s) 460. Theexecution cluster(s) 460 includes a set of one or more execution units462 and a set of one or more memory access units 464. The executionunits 462 may perform various operations (e.g., shifts, addition,subtraction, multiplication) and on various types of data (e.g., scalarfloating point, packed integer, packed floating point, vector integer,vector floating point). While some embodiments may include a number ofexecution units dedicated to specific functions or sets of functions,other embodiments may include only one execution unit or multipleexecution units that all perform all functions. The scheduler unit(s)456, physical register file(s) unit(s) 458, and execution cluster(s) 460are shown as being possibly plural because certain embodiments createseparate pipelines for certain types of data/operations (e.g., a scalarinteger pipeline, a scalar floating point/packed integer/packed floatingpoint/vector integer/vector floating point pipeline, and/or a memoryaccess pipeline that each have their own scheduler unit, physicalregister file(s) unit, and/or execution cluster—and in the case of aseparate memory access pipeline, certain embodiments are implemented inwhich only the execution cluster of this pipeline has the memory accessunit(s) 464). It should also be understood that where separate pipelinesare used, one or more of these pipelines may be out-of-orderissue/execution and the rest in-order.

The set of memory access units 464 is coupled to the memory unit 470,which includes a data TLB unit 472 coupled to a data cache unit 474coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476. In one exemplary embodiment,the memory access units 464 may include a load unit, a store addressunit, and a store data unit, each of which is coupled to the data TLBunit 472 in the memory unit 470. The instruction cache unit 434 isfurther coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476 in the memory unit 470.The L2 cache unit 476 is coupled to one or more other levels of cacheand eventually to a main memory.

By way of example, the exemplary register renaming, out-of-orderissue/execution core architecture may implement the pipeline 400 asfollows: 1) the instruction fetch 438 performs the fetch and lengthdecoding stages 402 and 404; 2) the decode unit 440 performs the decodestage 406; 3) the rename/allocator unit 452 performs the allocationstage 408 and renaming stage 410; 4) the scheduler unit(s) 456 performsthe schedule stage 412; 5) the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 andthe memory unit 470 perform the register read/memory read stage 414; theexecution cluster 460 perform the execute stage 416; 6) the memory unit470 and the physical register file(s) unit(s) 458 perform the writeback/memory write stage 418; 7) various units may be involved in theexception handling stage 422; and 8) the retirement unit 454 and thephysical register file(s) unit(s) 458 perform the commit stage 424.

The core 490 may support one or more instructions sets (e.g., the x86instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newerversions); the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale,Calif.; the ARM instruction set (with optional additional extensionssuch as NEON) of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.), including theinstruction(s) described herein. In one embodiment, the core 490includes logic to support a packed data instruction set extension (e.g.,AVX1, AVX2), thereby allowing the operations used by many multimediaapplications to be performed using packed data.

It should be understood that the core may support multithreading(executing two or more parallel sets of operations or threads), and maydo so in a variety of ways including time sliced multithreading,simultaneous multithreading (where a single physical core provides alogical core for each of the threads that physical core issimultaneously multithreading), or a combination thereof (e.g., timesliced fetching and decoding and simultaneous multithreading thereaftersuch as in the Intel® Hyperthreading technology).

While register renaming is described in the context of out-of-orderexecution, it should be understood that register renaming may be used inan in-order architecture. While the illustrated embodiment of theprocessor also includes separate instruction and data cache units434/474 and a shared L2 cache unit 476, alternative embodiments may havea single internal cache for both instructions and data, such as, forexample, a Level 1 (L1) internal cache, or multiple levels of internalcache. In some embodiments, the system may include a combination of aninternal cache and an external cache that is external to the core and/orthe processor. Alternatively, all of the cache may be external to thecore and/or the processor.

Specific Exemplary In-Order Core Architecture

FIGS. 5A-B illustrate a block diagram of a more specific exemplaryin-order core architecture, which core would be one of several logicblocks (including other cores of the same type and/or different types)in a chip. The logic blocks communicate through a high-bandwidthinterconnect network (e.g., a ring network) with some fixed functionlogic, memory I/O interfaces, and other necessary I/O logic, dependingon the application.

FIG. 5A is a block diagram of a single processor core, along with itsconnection to the on-die interconnect network 502 and with its localsubset of the Level 2 (L2) cache 504, according to embodiments of theinvention. In one embodiment, an instruction decoder 500 supports thex86 instruction set with a packed data instruction set extension. An L1cache 506 allows low-latency accesses to cache memory into the scalarand vector units. While in one embodiment (to simplify the design), ascalar unit 508 and a vector unit 510 use separate register sets(respectively, scalar registers 512 and vector registers 514) and datatransferred between them is written to memory and then read back in froma level 1 (L1) cache 506, alternative embodiments of the invention mayuse a different approach (e.g., use a single register set or include acommunication path that allow data to be transferred between the tworegister files without being written and read back).

The local subset of the L2 cache 504 is part of a global L2 cache thatis divided into separate local subsets, one per processor core. Eachprocessor core has a direct access path to its own local subset of theL2 cache 504. Data read by a processor core is stored in its L2 cachesubset 504 and can be accessed quickly, in parallel with other processorcores accessing their own local L2 cache subsets. Data written by aprocessor core is stored in its own L2 cache subset 504 and is flushedfrom other subsets, if necessary. The ring network ensures coherency forshared data. The ring network is bi-directional to allow agents such asprocessor cores, L2 caches and other logic blocks to communicate witheach other within the chip. Each ring data-path is 1024-bits wide perdirection in some embodiments.

FIG. 5B is an expanded view of part of the processor core in FIG. 5Aaccording to embodiments of the invention. FIG. 5B includes an L1 datacache 506A part of the L1 cache 504, as well as more detail regardingthe vector unit 510 and the vector registers 514. Specifically, thevector unit 510 is a 6-wide vector processing unit (VPU) (see the16-wide ALU 528), which executes one or more of integer,single-precision float, and double-precision float instructions. The VPUsupports swizzling the register inputs with swizzle unit 520, numericconversion with numeric convert units 522A-B, and replication withreplication unit 524 on the memory input.

Processor with integrated memory controller and graphics

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a processor 600 that may have more than onecore, may have an integrated memory controller, and may have integratedgraphics according to embodiments of the invention. The solid linedboxes in FIG. 6 illustrate a processor 600 with a single core 602A, asystem agent 610, a set of one or more bus controller units 616, whilethe optional addition of the dashed lined boxes illustrates analternative processor 600 with multiple cores 602A-N, a set of one ormore integrated memory controller unit(s) 614 in the system agent unit610, and special purpose logic 608.

Thus, different implementations of the processor 600 may include: 1) aCPU with the special purpose logic 608 being integrated graphics and/orscientific (throughput) logic (which may include one or more cores), andthe cores 602A-N being one or more general purpose cores (e.g., generalpurpose in-order cores, general purpose out-of-order cores, acombination of the two); 2) a coprocessor with the cores 602A-N being alarge number of special purpose cores intended primarily for graphicsand/or scientific (throughput); and 3) a coprocessor with the cores602A-N being a large number of general purpose in-order cores. Thus, theprocessor 600 may be a general-purpose processor, coprocessor orspecial-purpose processor, such as, for example, a network orcommunication processor, compression engine, graphics processor, GPGPU(general purpose graphics processing unit), a high-throughput manyintegrated core (MIC) coprocessor (including 30 or more cores), embeddedprocessor, or the like. The processor may be implemented on one or morechips. The processor 600 may be a part of and/or may be implemented onone or more substrates using any of a number of process technologies,such as, for example, BiCMOS, CMOS, or NMOS.

The memory hierarchy includes one or more levels of cache within thecores 604A-N, a set or one or more shared cache units 606, and externalmemory (not shown) coupled to the set of integrated memory controllerunits 614. The set of shared cache units 606 may include one or moremid-level caches, such as level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3), level 4 (L4), orother levels of cache, a last level cache (LLC), and/or combinationsthereof. While in one embodiment a ring based interconnect unit 612interconnects the integrated graphics logic 608, the set of shared cacheunits 606, and the system agent unit 610/integrated memory controllerunit(s) 614, alternative embodiments may use any number of well-knowntechniques for interconnecting such units. In one embodiment, coherencyis maintained between one or more cache units 606 and cores 602-A-N.

In some embodiments, one or more of the cores 602A-N are capable ofmulti-threading. The system agent 610 includes those componentscoordinating and operating cores 602A-N. The system agent unit 610 mayinclude for example a power control unit (PCU) and a display unit. ThePCU may be or include logic and components needed for regulating thepower state of the cores 602A-N and the integrated graphics logic 608.The display unit is for driving one or more externally connecteddisplays.

The cores 602A-N may be homogenous or heterogeneous in terms ofarchitecture instruction set; that is, two or more of the cores 602A-Nmay be capable of execution the same instruction set, while others maybe capable of executing only a subset of that instruction set or adifferent instruction set.

Exemplary Computer Architectures

FIGS. 7-10 are block diagrams of exemplary computer architectures. Othersystem designs and configurations known in the arts for laptops,desktops, handheld PCs, personal digital assistants, engineeringworkstations, servers, network devices, network hubs, switches, embeddedprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs), graphics devices, videogame devices, set-top boxes, micro controllers, cell phones, portablemedia players, hand held devices, and various other electronic devices,are also suitable. In general, a huge variety of systems or electronicdevices capable of incorporating a processor and/or other executionlogic as disclosed herein are generally suitable.

Referring now to FIG. 7, shown is a block diagram of a system 700 inaccordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The system 700may include one or more processors 710, 715, which are coupled to acontroller hub 720. In one embodiment, the controller hub 720 includes agraphics memory controller hub (GMCH) 790 and an Input/Output Hub (IOH)750 (which may be on separate chips); the GMCH 790 includes memory andgraphics controllers to which are coupled memory 740 and a coprocessor745; the IOH 750 is couples input/output (I/O) devices 760 to the GMCH790. Alternatively, one or both of the memory and graphics controllersare integrated within the processor (as described herein), the memory740 and the coprocessor 745 are coupled directly to the processor 710,and the controller hub 720 in a single chip with the IOH 750.

The optional nature of additional processors 715 is denoted in FIG. 7with broken lines. Each processor 710, 715 may include one or more ofthe processing cores described herein and may be some version of theprocessor 600.

The memory 740 may be, for example, dynamic random access memory (DRAM),phase change memory (PCM), or a combination of the two. For at least oneembodiment, the controller hub 720 communicates with the processor(s)710, 715 via a multi-drop bus, such as a frontside bus (FSB),point-to-point interface, or similar connection 795.

In one embodiment, the coprocessor 745 is a special-purpose processor,such as, for example, a high-throughput MIC processor, a network orcommunication processor, compression engine, graphics processor, GPGPU,embedded processor, or the like. In one embodiment, controller hub 720may include an integrated graphics accelerator.

There can be a variety of differences between the physical resources710, 7155 in terms of a spectrum of metrics of merit includingarchitectural, microarchitectural, thermal, power consumptioncharacteristics, and the like.

In one embodiment, the processor 710 executes instructions that controldata processing operations of a general type. Embedded within theinstructions may be coprocessor instructions. The processor 710recognizes these coprocessor instructions as being of a type that shouldbe executed by the attached coprocessor 745. Accordingly, the processor710 issues these coprocessor instructions (or control signalsrepresenting coprocessor instructions) on a coprocessor bus or otherinterconnect, to coprocessor 745. Coprocessor(s) 745 accept and executethe received coprocessor instructions.

Referring now to FIG. 8, shown is a block diagram of a first morespecific exemplary system 800 in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention. As shown in FIG. 8, multiprocessor system 800 is apoint-to-point interconnect system, and includes a first processor 870and a second processor 880 coupled via a point-to-point interconnect850. Each of processors 870 and 880 may be some version of the processor600. In one embodiment of the invention, processors 870 and 880 arerespectively processors 710 and 715, while coprocessor 838 iscoprocessor 745. In another embodiment, processors 870 and 880 arerespectively processor 710 coprocessor 745.

Processors 870 and 880 are shown including integrated memory controller(IMC) units 872 and 882, respectively. Processor 870 also includes aspart of its bus controller units point-to-point (P-P) interfaces 876 and878; similarly, second processor 880 includes P-P interfaces 886 and888. Processors 870, 880 may exchange information via a point-to-point(P-P) interface 850 using P-P interface circuits 878, 888. As shown inFIG. 8, IMCs 872 and 882 couple the processors to respective memories,namely a memory 832 and a memory 834, which may be portions of mainmemory locally attached to the respective processors.

Processors 870, 880 may each exchange information with a chipset 890 viaindividual P-P interfaces 852, 854 using point to point interfacecircuits 876, 894, 886, 898. Chipset 890 may optionally exchangeinformation with the coprocessor 838 via a high-performance interface892. In one embodiment, the coprocessor 838 is a special-purposeprocessor, such as, for example, a high-throughput MIC processor, anetwork or communication processor, compression engine, graphicsprocessor, GPGPU, embedded processor, or the like.

A shared cache (not shown) may be included in either processor oroutside of both processors, yet connected with the processors via P-Pinterconnect, such that either or both processors' local cacheinformation may be stored in the shared cache if a processor is placedinto a low power mode.

Chipset 890 may be coupled to a first bus 816 via an interface 896. Inone embodiment, first bus 816 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect(PCI) bus, or a bus such as a PCI Express bus or another I/Ointerconnect bus, although the scope of the present invention is not solimited.

As shown in FIG. 8, various I/O devices 814 may be coupled to first bus816, along with a bus bridge 818 which couples first bus 816 to a secondbus 820. In one embodiment, one or more additional processor(s) 815,such as coprocessors, high-throughput MIC processors, GPGPU's,accelerators (such as, e.g., graphics accelerators or digital signalprocessing (DSP) units), field programmable gate arrays, or any otherprocessor, are coupled to first bus 816. In one embodiment, second bus820 may be a low pin count (LPC) bus. Various devices may be coupled toa second bus 820 including, for example, a keyboard and/or mouse 822,communication devices 827 and a storage unit 828 such as a disk drive orother mass storage device which may include instructions/code and data830, in one embodiment. Further, an audio I/O 824 may be coupled to thesecond bus 816. Note that other architectures are possible. For example,instead of the point-to-point architecture of FIG. 8, a system mayimplement a multi-drop bus or other such architecture.

Referring now to FIG. 9, shown is a block diagram of a second morespecific exemplary system 900 in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention. Like elements in FIGS. 8 and 9 bear like referencenumerals, and certain aspects of FIG. 8 have been omitted from FIG. 9 inorder to avoid obscuring other aspects of FIG. 9.

FIG. 9 illustrates that the processors 870, 880 may include integratedmemory and I/O control logic (“CL”) 972 and 982, respectively. Thus, theCL 972, 982 include integrated memory controller units and include I/Ocontrol logic. FIG. 9 illustrates that not only are the memories 832,834 coupled to the CL 872, 882, but also that I/O devices 914 are alsocoupled to the control logic 872, 882. Legacy I/O devices 915 arecoupled to the chipset 890.

Referring now to FIG. 10, shown is a block diagram of a SoC 1000 inaccordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Similar elementsin FIG. 6 bear like reference numerals. Also, dashed lined boxes areoptional features on more advanced SoCs. In FIG. 10, an interconnectunit(s) 1002 is coupled to: an application processor 1010 which includesa set of one or more cores 102A-N, cache units 604A-N, and shared cacheunit(s) 606; a system agent unit 610; a bus controller unit(s) 616; anintegrated memory controller unit(s) 614; a set or one or morecoprocessors 1020 which may include integrated graphics logic, an imageprocessor, an audio processor, and a video processor; an static randomaccess memory (SRAM) unit 1030; a direct memory access (DMA) unit 1032;and a display unit 1040 for coupling to one or more external displays.In one embodiment, the coprocessor(s) 1020 include a special-purposeprocessor, such as, for example, a network or communication processor,compression engine, GPGPU, a high-throughput MIC processor, embeddedprocessor, or the like.

Embodiments of the mechanisms disclosed herein may be implemented inhardware, software, firmware, or a combination of such implementationapproaches. Embodiments of the invention may be implemented as computerprograms or program code executing on programmable systems comprising atleast one processor, a storage system (including volatile andnon-volatile memory and/or storage elements), at least one input device,and at least one output device.

Program code, such as code 830 illustrated in FIG. 8, may be applied toinput instructions to perform the functions described herein andgenerate output information. The output information may be applied toone or more output devices, in known fashion. For purposes of thisapplication, a processing system includes any system that has aprocessor, such as, for example; a digital signal processor (DSP), amicrocontroller, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or amicroprocessor.

The program code may be implemented in a high level procedural or objectoriented programming language to communicate with a processing system.The program code may also be implemented in assembly or machinelanguage, if desired. In fact, the mechanisms described herein are notlimited in scope to any particular programming language. In any case,the language may be a compiled or interpreted language.

One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented byrepresentative instructions stored on a machine-readable medium whichrepresents various logic within the processor, which when read by amachine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniquesdescribed herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may bestored on a tangible, machine readable medium and supplied to variouscustomers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabricationmachines that actually make the logic or processor.

Such machine-readable storage media may include, without limitation,non-transitory, tangible arrangements of articles manufactured or formedby a machine or device, including storage media such as hard disks, anyother type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, compact diskread-only memories (CD-ROMs), compact disk rewritable's (CD-RWs), andmagneto-optical disks, semiconductor devices such as read-only memories(ROMs), random access memories (RAMs) such as dynamic random accessmemories (DRAMs), static random access memories (SRAMs), erasableprogrammable read-only memories (EPROMs), flash memories, electricallyerasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), phase change memory(PCM), magnetic or optical cards, or any other type of media suitablefor storing electronic instructions.

Accordingly, embodiments of the invention also include non-transitory,tangible machine-readable media containing instructions or containingdesign data, such as Hardware Description Language (HDL), which definesstructures, circuits, apparatuses, processors and/or system featuresdescribed herein. Such embodiments may also be referred to as programproducts.

Emulation (Including Binary Translation, Code Morphing, Etc.)

In some cases, an instruction converter may be used to convert aninstruction from a source instruction set to a target instruction set.For example, the instruction converter may translate (e.g., using staticbinary translation, dynamic binary translation including dynamiccompilation), morph, emulate, or otherwise convert an instruction to oneor more other instructions to be processed by the core. The instructionconverter may be implemented in software, hardware, firmware, or acombination thereof. The instruction converter may be on processor, offprocessor, or part on and part off processor.

FIG. 11 is a block diagram contrasting the use of a software instructionconverter to convert binary instructions in a source instruction set tobinary instructions in a target instruction set according to embodimentsof the invention. In the illustrated embodiment, the instructionconverter is a software instruction converter, although alternativelythe instruction converter may be implemented in software, firmware,hardware, or various combinations thereof. FIG. 11 shows a program in ahigh level language 1102 may be compiled using an first compiler 1104 togenerate a first binary code (e.g., x86) 1106 that may be nativelyexecuted by a processor with at least one first instruction set core1116. In some embodiments, the processor with at least one firstinstruction set core 1116 represents any processor that can performsubstantially the same functions as an Intel processor with at least onex86 instruction set core by compatibly executing or otherwise processing(1) a substantial portion of the instruction set of the Intel x86instruction set core or (2) object code versions of applications orother software targeted to run on an Intel processor with at least onex86 instruction set core, in order to achieve substantially the sameresult as an Intel processor with at least one x86 instruction set core.The first compiler 1104 represents a compiler that is operable togenerate binary code of the first instruction set 1106 (e.g., objectcode) that can, with or without additional linkage processing, beexecuted on the processor with at least one first instruction set core1116. Similarly, FIG. 11 shows the program in the high level language1102 may be compiled using an alternative instruction set compiler 1108to generate alternative instruction set binary code 1110 that may benatively executed by a processor without at least one first instructionset core 1114 (e.g., a processor with cores that execute the MIPSinstruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale, Calif. and/or thatexecute the ARM instruction set of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.).The instruction converter 1112 is used to convert the first binary code1106 into code that may be natively executed by the processor without anfirst instruction set core 1114. This converted code is not likely to bethe same as the alternative instruction set binary code 1110 because aninstruction converter capable of this is difficult to make; however, theconverted code will accomplish the general operation and be made up ofinstructions from the alternative instruction set. Thus, the instructionconverter 1112 represents software, firmware, hardware, or a combinationthereof that, through emulation, simulation or any other process, allowsa processor or other electronic device that does not have a firstinstruction set processor or core to execute the first binary code 1106.

Memory Management Apparatus and Method for Managing Different PageTables for Different Privilege Levels

In current processors, a virtual address is translated to a physicaladdress using a set of page tables managed by the processor's addresstranslation circuitry. A pointer stored in one or more control registers(e.g., a CR3 register) points to a base translation table and differentportions of the virtual address are used to identify different levels oftranslation tables to generate the physical address.

In current implementations, translation information for less privilegedand more privileged pages reside in the same page tables. As a result,it is possible for less privileged software to indirectly accesstranslation information for more privileged pages, even speculatively.In addition, changing interpretation of page tables (e.g. from 4-levelto 5-level paging) requires disabling paging protections within theoperating system, opening time windows where the primary memoryprotection capability is disabled. Moreover, because the process contextID (PCID) is stored in the page table base register (e.g., CR3), it islimited to only 12 bits.

Finally, in current implementations, recursive page tables can only usethe lower four entries of the 8-entry page attribute table (PAT) becausethe upper bit of the PAT selector at the leaf level overlaps with thelarge page bit at the upper levels

FIG. 12A illustrates an exemplary processor 1255 on which embodiments ofthe invention may be implemented including a plurality of cores 0-N forsimultaneously executing a plurality of instruction threads. Whiledetails of only a single core (Core 0) are shown in FIG. 12A, it will beunderstood that each of the other cores of processor 1255 may includethe same or similar components.

The plurality of cores 0-N may each include a memory management unit(MMU) 1290 for performing memory operations (e.g., such as load/storeoperations). Address translation circuitry 1280 of the MMU 1290 performsthe address translation techniques described herein to allow the core toaccess pages in memory 1200 using pointers contained within a set ofcontrol/MSR registers 1208. In one embodiment, in response to an addresstranslation request comprising a virtual address, the addresstranslation circuitry 1280 accesses the appropriate set of pages insystem memory to identify the physical memory address associated withthe virtual address. It may then cache the virtual-to-physicaltranslation with a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) 1281.

The illustrated architecture also includes an execution pipeline whichuses the address translations including an instruction fetch unit 1210for fetching instructions from system memory 1200, the level 1 (L1)instruction cache 1220, the L2 cache 1211, or the L3 cache 1216. Theinstruction fetch unit 1210 also includes a next instruction pointer1203 for storing the address of the next instruction to be fetched frommemory 1200 (or one of the caches); an instruction translationlook-aside buffer (ITLB) 1204 for storing a map of recently usedvirtual-to-physical instruction addresses to improve the speed ofaddress translation; a branch prediction unit 1202 for speculativelypredicting instruction branch addresses; and branch target buffers(BTBs) 1201 for storing branch addresses and target addresses.

A decoder 1230 decodes the fetched instructions into micro-operations or“uops” and an execution unit 1240 executing the uops on a plurality offunctional units. A writeback/retirement unit 1250 retires the executedinstructions and writes back the results to other elements of theexecution pipeline.

The illustrated core architecture also includes a set of general purposeregisters (GPRs) 1205, a set of vector registers 1206, and a set of maskregisters 1207. In one embodiment, multiple vector data elements arepacked into each vector register 1206 which may have a 512 bit width forstoring two 256 bit values, four 128 bit values, eight 64 bit values,sixteen 32 bit values, etc. However, the underlying principles of theinvention are not limited to any particular size/type of vector data. Inone embodiment, the mask registers 1207 include eight 64-bit operandmask registers used for performing bit masking operations on the valuesstored in the vector registers 1206 (e.g., implemented as mask registersk0-k7 described herein). However, the underlying principles of theinvention are not limited to any particular mask register size/type.

Each core 0-N may include a dedicated Level 1 (L1) cache 1212 and Level2 (L2) cache 1211 for caching instructions and data according to aspecified cache management policy. As mentioned, the L1 cache 1212includes a separate instruction cache 1220 for storing instructions anda separate data cache 1221 for storing data. The instructions and datastored within the various processor caches are managed at thegranularity of cache lines which may be a fixed size (e.g., 64, 128, 512Bytes in length).

FIG. 12B illustrates another embodiment which includes a system memorymanagement unit (SMMU) 1290 for performing system-level memorymanagement operations on behalf of all of the cores and any othersystem-level components such as a graphics processor and a digitalsignal processor (DSP) which may be integrated on the same semiconductorchip as the processor 1256. The SMMU includes address translationcircuitry 1284 for performing virtual-to-physical translations asdescribed herein and a TLB 1283 for caching the system-level addresstranslations, which may be synchronized with the translations in theTLBs 1281 of each core.

In contrast to prior implementations in which translation entriesassigned to different privilege levels are stored within the sametranslation tables, one embodiment of the invention allocates adifferent set of translation tables for each privilege level. FIG. 13illustrates one particular embodiment which includes a first privilegelevel, referred to as the “supervisor” level and a second privilegelevel, referred to as the “user” level. In one embodiment, only certaintypes of software such as the operating system (OS) and/or Hypervisor(in a virtualized embodiment) is executed at the supervisor privilegelevel, while user applications are executed at the user privilege level.

While some embodiments of the invention are described herein within thecontext of two privilege levels (supervisor and user), other embodimentsuse one or more additional privilege levels at which different types ofprogram code are executed. In these embodiments, each privilege levelmay be associated with its own set of address translation resourcesincluding TLB resources as described herein for the user and supervisorprivilege levels.

Returning to FIG. 13, in the illustrated embodiment the addresstranslation circuitry 1280 programs a first control register 1310 (e.g.,register CR3 in an x86 implementation) with a supervisor basetranslation table pointer (SBTTP) to identify a supervisor basetranslation table 1351. The address translation circuitry 1280 willsubsequently translate requests originating from program code running ata supervisor privilege level by using the SBTTP to identify thesupervisor base translation table 1351. Similarly, the addresstranslation circuitry 1280 programs a second control register 1320(e.g., control register CR5) with a user base translation table pointer(UBTTP) 1310 to identify a user base translation table 1361. For programcode executing with a user-level privilege, the address translationcircuitry 1280 performs a page walk operation with the user basetranslation table 1361 identified by the UBTTP.

The address translation circuitry 1280 parses the various linear addressblocks (LABs) 1381-1385 of the virtual/linear address 1380 to walk thevarious levels of translation tables 1352-1354 to identify theassociated physical address. In one embodiment, each LAB 1381-1385comprises a set of virtual/linear address bits which identify adifferent entry in a different translation table 1351-1354. Inparticular, in one embodiment, each LAB 1351-1355 is combined with apointer to identify an entry in one of the supervisor-level translationtables 1381-1385 (if the request originated from supervisor-levelprogram code as in FIG. 13) or user-level translation tables 1361-1365(if the request originated from user-level program code).

In FIG. 13, the SBTTP identifies the supervisor base translation table1351 and the first LAB 1381 identifies an offset from the base SBTTPvalue to identify an entry in the supervisor base translation table 1351containing a pointer to the base address of the second level translationtable 1352. The second LAB 1382 identifies an offset from the baseaddress of the second level translation table 1352 to identify an entryin the second level translation table 1352 containing a pointer to thebase address of the third level translation table 1353, and so on, untilthe final entry in the last level translation table 1354 provides thephysical address 1390.

In one embodiment, the address translation circuitry 1280 programs athird control register 1321 (e.g., control register CR6) with a processcontext ID (PCID) value to uniquely identify the context of thecurrently executing process. In one embodiment, the PCID value isupdated on a context switch to identify the new context of the newprocess being swapped in. In contrast to prior implementations whichlimited the PCID value to 12 bits when stored in control register CR3,this embodiment provides a full 64-bit process context ID (PCID) storedin a new control register 1321.

Each physical address 1390 identified by accessing the page tables1351-1354, 1361-1364 as described above may be stored in an entry in theTLB 1281 and associated with at least a portion of the virtual/linearaddress 1380. In addition, in one embodiment, each translationoriginating from user-level program code has the current PCID from thethird control register 1321 associated with it in the TLB 1281 and eachtranslation originating from supervisor-level program code has a fixedPCID identification value associated with it in the TLB 1281 (e.g., afixed value of 0 in one embodiment).

FIG. 14 illustrates an example TLB 1281 comprising a set of entries,each of which is associated with a PCID value 1401 to specify aparticular context, a virtual address 1402, an associated physicaladdress 1403, and one or more status/control bits 1404. In thisparticular example, the status bits indicate whether the TLB entry isvalid (1) or invalid (0). In one embodiment, the current PCID valueassociated with a translation request 1411 is used in combination withthe virtual address to perform the TLB lookup so that a TLB hit will begenerated only if a TLB entry 1281 includes both the PCID value (orportion thereof) and the virtual address (or portion thereof). If boththe PCID value and virtual address match, a TLB hit is returned with theassociated physical address (PA) 1403. If a match is not found, a TLBmiss is returned, causing the address translation circuitry 1280 toperforms a page walk (as described above) which will update an entry inthe TLB with the resulting physical address.

In one embodiment, a TLB entry containing a PCID value associated withsupervisor-level program code can only be accessed in response to asupervisor-level translation request 1411. In the example shown in FIG.14, the third TLB entry from the top includes a PCID value of 0 toindicate that it is an entry associated with supervisor-level programcode. Thus, only a translation request originating from thesupervisor-level program code (having a PCID value of 0) will result ina TLB hit.

Different PCID value sizes and/or types may be used while stillcomplying with the underlying principles of the invention. By way ofexample, and not limitation, 64-bit PCID values are used in oneembodiment but other embodiments may use 32-bit, 12-bit values, or anyother set of values capable of distinguishing between contexts. Inaddition, a variety of additional fields may be included for each TLBentry such as page attribute bits specifying attributes for theassociated memory page (e.g., uncacheable, write combining, writethrough, write protected, write back, etc).

In addition to translation requests 1411, TLB management operations 1412may use specific PCID values to identify only those TLB entriesassociated with a given context. For example, a TLB invalidateinstruction may be executed to invalidate only those TLB entriesassociated with a particular PCID (e.g., in response to the processassociated with that PCID being terminated). In addition,supervisor-level program code (e.g., system-level software) may includeinstructions to invalidate all TLB entries, to invalidate only entrieshaving a particular virtual address or physical address, regardless ofPCID, or to invalidate entries based on any other criteria.

By way of example, and not limitation, to flush all entries associatedwith a given application, an INVPCID instruction may be executedspecifying the full 64-bit PCID associated with the application. Forsupervisor pages, the fixed PCID value (0) may be used to accomplish theTLB flush. In either case, only those TLB entries associated with thegiven PCID will be flushed, retaining translations for other contexts.

Embodiments of the invention may allow more privileged (supervisor)software to access memory in less privileged (user) domains. Forexample, a particular control bit or set of control bits (e.g., the SMAPbit and AC bit in x86 architectures) may be set in one or more controlregisters (e.g., the CR4 and EFLAGS registers) to allow explicitsupervisor-mode data accesses to user-mode pages. Whenever these flagsare set in supervisor mode, all memory accesses may be directed to userspace. Alternatively, or in addition, an instruction prefix may be usedto indicate that a given instruction's memory accesses should bedirected to user space. In either case, supervisor accesses directed touser space will use the UBTTP in control register 1320 (e.g., CR5) fortranslation instead of the SBTTP in control register 1310 (e.g., CR3).

As a result of the embodiments described herein, PCID changes no longerneed to be simultaneous with changes to the page tables used, as thesupervisor PCID never changes (which means it cannot change when thepage tables change) and the user PCID can only be changed in supervisormode, meaning the new PCID will not be used immediately, removing therisk of using the new page tables before the PCID is changed orvice-versa. In one embodiment, appropriate TLB management is performedwhen the page table base is changed without changing the PCID or whenthe PCID is changed.

As mentioned, the embodiments of the invention may be implemented withdifferent types of address translation architectures including thosewhich use 4-level paging and 5-level paging. By way of example, and notlimitation, FIG. 15 illustrates an example of a 4-level pagingarchitecture and FIG. 16 illustrates an example of a 5-level pagingarchitecture.

In FIG. 15, control register CR3 1501 stores the base address of a pagemap level 4 (PML4) table 1502. The address translation circuitry 1280uses this value and bits 47:39 of the virtual/linear address 1510 toidentify an entry which identifies the base of a page directory pointertable 1503 in which an entry is identified using directory pointer bits38:30 of the virtual/linear address 1510. The entry from the PDPT 1503points to the base of a page directory 1504 and directory bits 29:21from the virtual/linear address 1510 identify a page directory entry(PDE) pointing to the base of a page table 1505. Table bits 20:12identify a page table entry (PTE) which points to the base of page 1506and a particular physical address is identified using offset bits 11:0from the virtual/linear address 1510.

The 5-level paging implementation in FIG. 16 operates in substantiallythe same manner except that the value in control register CR3 points toa page map level 5 (PML5) table and PML5 bits 56:48 of thevirtual/linear address identify a PML5 entry pointing to the base of thePML4 table 1603. The page directory pointer table 1604, page directory1605, page table 1606, and page 1607 containing the physical address areaccessed in a similar manner as described above.

With the embodiments of the invention, the paging translation type maybe switched between 4-level and 5-level paging (or any other group ofpaging types) by a single write to either control register 1310, controlregister 1320, or both. In particular, this write operation may includea first bit field to specify the number of page table levels (i.e., thetranslation “mode”) and a second bit field to specify the base addressof the page tables that support the target arrangement. There is nolonger a need as in existing systems to disable paging in order to makethese changes.

Some existing implementations store a user/supervisor bit in each pagetable entry to indicate whether the corresponding page is associatedwith a user-privileged program code or supervisor privileged programcode. In addition, in these implementations, recursive page tables canonly use the lower four entries of the 8-entry page attribute table(PAT) used for memory typing because the upper bit of the PAT selectorat the leaf level overlaps with the large page bit at upper levels.

Using the embodiments described herein, the user/supervisor bit is nolonger required within individual page table entries and may thereforebe used freed up for other purposes. In one particular embodiment, forsystems which include a page attribute table (PAT) 1301 (or otherstructure for storing page attribute information), the deprecateduser/supervisor bit is repurposed as a third bit of a PAT index at alllevels of the page table hierarchy, with the third bit defined for leafentries today being returned to the reserved bit pool for other uses asneeded. This implementation results in a consistent, full 3-bit PATindex at all levels of the page tables, even when recursive tables areused.

The embodiments described herein also inherently prevent user-levelsoftware from indirectly accessing supervisor page translationinformation, since table used to translate user-level requests can befree of any supervisor-level translations. In addition, using theseembodiments, paging does not need to be disabled when changing pagingalgorithms as a simple write to the relevant control register(s) 1310,1320 can be used to effect the change (e.g., 4-level to 5-level pagingor vice-versa).

In addition, a full 64-bit PCID as described herein allows softwareusing up to 64 bit process identifiers to use the values directly asprocess context IDs.

While CR5 and CR6 are described as possibilities options for the newcontrol registers 1320-1321, the underlying principles of the inventionare not limited to these specific details. For example, architecturalmachine status registers (MSRs) may also be used. In the examples whichuse control register CR5, this register may be formatted in the samemanner as CR3, except that the least significant bit of CR5/CR6 mayprovides an enable for the use of the new registers.

The “supervisor” mode and “user” mode as described herein may representany two privilege levels, with supervisor being the higher of the twolevels. For example, in one implementation supervisor mode means thatthe current privilege level (CPL) is CPL0, CPL1, or CPL2 while user modemeans CPL 3.

A method in accordance with one embodiment is illustrated in FIG. 17.The method may be implemented within the context of the processorarchitectures described above, but is not limited to any particularprocessor architecture.

At 1701, a first control register is programmed with a first baseaddress and translation mode for first program code operating at a firstprivilege level. In some embodiments described above, the “supervisor”level is the first privilege level, the first control register comprisesCR3, and the translation mode comprises a 4-level or 5-level translationarchitecture.

At 1702, a second control register is programmed with a second baseaddress and translation mode for second program code operating at asecond privilege level which is lower than the first privilege level. Insome embodiments described above, the “user” level is the secondprivilege level, the first control register comprises CR5, and thetranslation mode comprises a 4-level or 5-level translationarchitecture. Note that the translation modes specified in the first andsecond control registers may be the same or may be different.

At 1703, a third control register is programmed with the contextidentifier associated with the second program code. In some embodimentsdescribed above, the context identifier comprises a PCID valueassociated with the second program code.

Upon receipt of a translation request at 1704, if the request originatesfrom the second program code, then at 1705 the TLB is initially queriedusing the context identifier from the third control register and thevirtual/linear address. If the entry is located then the associatedphysical address is returned from the TLB. If not, then a page walk isperformed using the second base address and translation mode to identifythe physical address. The resulting physical address may then be storedin the TLB along with the virtual address and context identifier.

If the request originates from the first program code, then at 1706 theTLB is initially queried using a fixed context identifier associatedwith the first privilege level (e.g., 0) and the virtual/linear address.If the entry is located then the associated physical address is returnedfrom the TLB. If not, then a page walk is performed using the first baseaddress and translation mode to identify the physical address. Theresulting physical address may then be stored in the TLB along with thevirtual address and fixed context identifier.

In the foregoing specification, the embodiments of invention have beendescribed with reference to specific exemplary embodiments thereof. Itwill, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may bemade thereto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of theinvention as set forth in the appended claims. The specification anddrawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather thana restrictive sense.

EXAMPLES Example 1

A processor comprising: a first control register to store a first baseaddress associated with program code executed at a first privilegelevel; a second control register to store a second base addressassociated with program code executed at a second privilege level lowerthan the first privilege level; and address translation circuitry toidentify a first base translation table using the first base addressresponsive to a first address translation request originating from theprogram code executed at the first privilege level and to identify asecond base translation table using the second base address responsiveto a second address translation request originating from the programcode executed at the second privilege level.

Example 2

The processor of example 1 wherein the address translation circuitry isto use a first portion of a first virtual address included in the firstaddress translation request to identify a first entry in the first basetranslation table, and is to use a first portion of a second virtualaddress included in the second address translation request to identify afirst entry in the second base translation table.

Example 3

The processor of example 2 wherein the first entry in the first basetranslation table comprises a pointer to a first level-2 translationtable and wherein the first entry in the second base translation tablecomprises a pointer to a second level-2 translation table.

Example 4

The processor of example 3 wherein the address translation circuitry isto use one or more additional portions of the first virtual address toidentify a first one or more additional levels of translation tables todetermine a first physical address associated with the first virtualaddress and is to use one or more additional portions of the secondvirtual address to identify a second one or more additional levels oftranslation tables to determine a second physical address associatedwith the second virtual address.

Example 5

The processor of example 4 further comprising: a third control registerto store a context identifier to identify a context for at least aportion of the program code executed at the second privilege level.

Example 6

The processor of example 4 wherein the second privilege level comprisesa user privilege level and the at least a portion of the program codecomprises an application.

Example 7

The processor of example 4 further comprising: a translation lookasidebuffer (TLB) comprising a plurality of entries, a first entry to storethe first virtual address and the first physical address and a secondentry to store the second virtual address and the second physicaladdress.

Example 8

The processor of example 7 wherein the second entry is to further storethe context identifier, wherein an address translation operation is toresult in a TLB hit only if the address translation operation isperformed in a context identified by the context identifier.

Example 9

The processor of example 4 further comprising: a page attribute table(PAT) to store attributes associated with pages in memory; wherein thefirst and second level-2 translation tables and/or additional levels oftranslation tables are to include a number of PAT index bits to addressall entries of the PAT.

Example 10

The processor of example 4 wherein the first control register is toadditionally store first translation mode data to specify a translationmode to be used by the address translation circuitry to identify thesecond physical address and wherein the second control register is toadditionally store second translation mode data to specify a translationmode to be used by the address translation circuitry to identify thesecond physical address.

Example 11

A method comprising: storing a first base address associated withprogram code executed at a first privilege level in a first controlregister; storing a second base address associated with program codeexecuted at a second privilege level in a second control register, thesecond privilege level lower than the first privilege level; andreceiving a first address translation request originating from theprogram code executed at the first privilege level; identifying a firstbase translation table using the first base address responsive to thefirst address translation request; receiving a second addresstranslation request originating from the program code executed at thesecond privilege level; and identifying a second base translation tableusing the second base address responsive to the second addresstranslation request.

Example 12

The method of example 11 wherein a first portion of a first virtualaddress included in the first address translation request is to be usedto identify a first entry in the first base translation table, andwherein a first portion of a second virtual address included in thesecond address translation request is to be used to identify a firstentry in the second base translation table.

Example 13

The method of example 12 wherein the first entry in the first basetranslation table comprises a pointer to a first level-2 translationtable and wherein the first entry in the second base translation tablecomprises a pointer to a second level-2 translation table.

Example 14

The method of example 13 wherein one or more additional portions of thefirst virtual address are to be used to identify a first one or moreadditional levels of translation tables to determine a first physicaladdress associated with the first virtual address and wherein one ormore additional portions of the second virtual address are to be used toidentify a second one or more additional levels of translation tables todetermine a second physical address associated with the second virtualaddress.

Example 15

The method of example 14 further comprising: storing a contextidentifier in a third control register to identify a context for atleast a portion of the program code executed at the second privilegelevel.

Example 16

The method of example 14 wherein the second privilege level comprises auser privilege level and the at least a portion of the program codecomprises an application.

Example 17

The method of example 14 further comprising: storing the first virtualaddress and the first physical address in a first entry in a translationlookaside buffer (TLB); and storing the second virtual address and thesecond physical address in a second entry in the TLB.

Example 18

The method of example 17 wherein the second entry is to further storethe context identifier, wherein an address translation operation is toresult in a TLB hit only if the address translation operation isperformed in a context identified by the context identifier.

Example 19

The method of example 14 further comprising: storing attributesassociated with pages in memory in a page attribute table (PAT); whereinthe first and second level-2 translation tables and/or additional levelsof translation tables are to include a number of PAT index bits toaddress all entries of the PAT.

Example 20

The method of example 14 wherein the first control register is toadditionally store first translation mode data to specify a translationmode to be used to identify the second physical address and wherein thesecond control register is to additionally store second translation modedata to specify a translation mode to be used to identify the secondphysical address.

Example 21

A machine-readable medium having program code stored thereon which, whenexecuted by a machine, causes the machine to perform the operations of:storing a first base address associated with program code executed at afirst privilege level in a first control register; storing a second baseaddress associated with program code executed at a second privilegelevel in a second control register, the second privilege level lowerthan the first privilege level; and receiving a first addresstranslation request originating from the program code executed at thefirst privilege level; identifying a first base translation table usingthe first base address responsive to the first address translationrequest; receiving a second address translation request originating fromthe program code executed at the second privilege level; and identifyinga second base translation table using the second base address responsiveto the second address translation request.

Example 22

The machine-readable medium of claim 21 wherein a first portion of afirst virtual address included in the first address translation requestis to be used to identify a first entry in the first base translationtable, and wherein a first portion of a second virtual address includedin the second address translation request is to be used to identify afirst entry in the second base translation table.

Example 23

The machine-readable medium of claim 22 wherein the first entry in thefirst base translation table comprises a pointer to a first level-2translation table and wherein the first entry in the second basetranslation table comprises a pointer to a second level-2 translationtable.

Example 24

The machine-readable medium of claim 23 wherein one or more additionalportions of the first virtual address are to be used to identify a firstone or more additional levels of translation tables to determine a firstphysical address associated with the first virtual address and whereinone or more additional portions of the second virtual address are to beused to identify a second one or more additional levels of translationtables to determine a second physical address associated with the secondvirtual address.

Example 25

The machine-readable medium of example 24 further comprising programcode to cause the machine to perform the operation of: storing a contextidentifier in a third control register to identify a context for atleast a portion of the program code executed at the second privilegelevel.

Example 26

The machine-readable medium of example 24 wherein the second privilegelevel comprises a user privilege level and the at least a portion of theprogram code comprises an application.

Example 27

The machine-readable medium of claim 24 further comprising program codeto cause the machine to perform the operations of: storing the firstvirtual address and the first physical address in a first entry in atranslation lookaside buffer (TLB); and storing the second virtualaddress and the second physical address in a second entry in the TLB.

Example 28

The machine-readable medium of example 27 wherein the second entry is tofurther store the context identifier, wherein an address translationoperation is to result in a TLB hit only if the address translationoperation is performed in a context identified by the contextidentifier.

Example 29

The machine-readable medium of example 24 further comprising programcode to cause the machine to perform the operation of: storingattributes associated with pages in memory in a page attribute table(PAT); wherein the first and second level-2 translation tables and/oradditional levels of translation tables are to include a number of PATindex bits to address all entries of the PAT.

Example 30

The machine-readable medium of example 24 wherein the first controlregister is to additionally store first translation mode data to specifya translation mode to be used to identify the second physical addressand wherein the second control register is to additionally store secondtranslation mode data to specify a translation mode to be used toidentify the second physical address.

Embodiments of the invention may include various steps, which have beendescribed above. The steps may be embodied in machine-executableinstructions which may be used to cause a general-purpose orspecial-purpose processor to perform the steps. Alternatively, thesesteps may be performed by specific hardware components that containhardwired logic for performing the steps, or by any combination ofprogrammed computer components and custom hardware components.

As described herein, instructions may refer to specific configurationsof hardware such as application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)configured to perform certain operations or having a predeterminedfunctionality or software instructions stored in memory embodied in anon-transitory computer readable medium. Thus, the techniques shown inthe Figures can be implemented using code and data stored and executedon one or more electronic devices (e.g., an end station, a networkelement, etc.). Such electronic devices store and communicate(internally and/or with other electronic devices over a network) codeand data using computer machine-readable media, such as non-transitorycomputer machine-readable storage media (e.g., magnetic disks; opticaldisks; random access memory; read only memory; flash memory devices;phase-change memory) and transitory computer machine-readablecommunication media (e.g., electrical, optical, acoustical or other formof propagated signals—such as carrier waves, infrared signals, digitalsignals, etc.). In addition, such electronic devices typically include aset of one or more processors coupled to one or more other components,such as one or more storage devices (non-transitory machine-readablestorage media), user input/output devices (e.g., a keyboard, atouchscreen, and/or a display), and network connections. The coupling ofthe set of processors and other components is typically through one ormore busses and bridges (also termed as bus controllers). The storagedevice and signals carrying the network traffic respectively representone or more machine-readable storage media and machine-readablecommunication media. Thus, the storage device of a given electronicdevice typically stores code and/or data for execution on the set of oneor more processors of that electronic device. Of course, one or moreparts of an embodiment of the invention may be implemented usingdifferent combinations of software, firmware, and/or hardware.Throughout this detailed description, for the purposes of explanation,numerous specific details were set forth in order to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the present invention. It will be apparent, however, toone skilled in the art that the invention may be practiced without someof these specific details. In certain instances, well known structuresand functions were not described in elaborate detail in order to avoidobscuring the subject matter of the present invention. Accordingly, thescope and spirit of the invention should be judged in terms of theclaims which follow.

What is claimed is:
 1. A processor comprising: a first control registerto store a first base address associated with program code executed at afirst privilege level; a second control register to store a second baseaddress associated with program code executed at a second privilegelevel lower than the first privilege level; a third control register tostore a context identifier to identify a context for at least a portionof the program code executed at the second privilege level, wherein thecontext identifier to identify the context for the at least portion ofthe program code executed at the second privilege level is changeable atthe first privilege level but not the second privilege level, whereinanother context identifier to identify a context for at least theportion of the program code executed at the first privilege level, andwherein the another context identifier is unchangeable at the firstprivilege level and the second privilege level; and address translationcircuitry to identify a first base translation table using the firstbase address responsive to a first address translation requestoriginating from the program code executed at the first privilege leveland to identify a second base translation table using the second baseaddress responsive to a second address translation request originatingfrom the program code executed at the second privilege level.
 2. Theprocessor of claim 1, wherein the another context identifier is the samefor any portion of the program code executed at the first privilegedlevel.
 3. The processor of claim 1 wherein the address translationcircuitry is to use a first portion of a first virtual address includedin the first address translation request to identify a first entry inthe first base translation table, and is to use a first portion of asecond virtual address included in the second address translationrequest to identify a first entry in the second base translation table.4. The processor of claim 3 wherein the first entry in the first basetranslation table comprises a pointer to a first level-2 translationtable and wherein the first entry in the second base translation tablecomprises a pointer to a second level-2 translation table.
 5. Theprocessor of claim 4 wherein the address translation circuitry is to useone or more additional portions of the first virtual address to identifya first one or more additional levels of translation tables to determinea first physical address associated with the first virtual address andis to use one or more additional portions of the second virtual addressto identify a second one or more additional levels of translation tablesto determine a second physical address associated with the secondvirtual address.
 6. The processor of claim 5 further comprising: a pageattribute table (PAT) to store attributes associated with pages inmemory; wherein the first level-2 translation table and second level-2translation table and/or additional levels of translation tables are toinclude a number of PAT index bits to address all entries of the PAT. 7.The processor of claim 1 wherein the second privilege level comprises auser privilege level and the at least a portion of the program codecomprises an application.
 8. The processor of claim 1 furthercomprising: a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) comprising a pluralityof entries, a first entry to store a first virtual address and a firstphysical address and a second entry to store a second virtual addressand a second physical address.
 9. The processor of claim 8 wherein thesecond entry is to further store the context identifier, wherein anaddress translation operation is to result in a TLB hit only if theaddress translation operation is performed in a context identified bythe context identifier.
 10. The processor of claim 8, wherein the secondentry is to further store the context identifier, and wherein aninstruction specifies the context identifier, and wherein execution ofthe instruction flushes the second entry.
 11. The processor of claim 1wherein the first control register is to additionally store firsttranslation mode data to specify a translation mode to be used by theaddress translation circuitry to identify a first physical addressassociated with a first virtual address and wherein the second controlregister is to additionally store second translation mode data tospecify a translation mode to be used by the address translationcircuitry to identify a second physical address associated with a secondvirtual address.
 12. A method comprising: storing a first base addressassociated with program code executed at a first privilege level in afirst control register; storing a second base address associated withprogram code executed at a second privilege level in a second controlregister, the second privilege level lower than the first privilegelevel; storing a context identifier in a third control register toidentify a context for at least a portion of the program code executedat the second privilege level, wherein the context identifier toidentify the context for the at least portion of the program codeexecuted at the second privilege level is changeable at the firstprivilege level but not the second privilege level, wherein anothercontext identifier to identify a context for at least the portion of theprogram code executed at the first privilege level, and wherein theanother context identifier is unchangeable at the first privilege leveland the second privilege level; receiving a first address translationrequest originating from the program code executed at the firstprivilege level; identifying a first base translation table using thefirst base address responsive to the first address translation request;receiving a second address translation request originating from theprogram code executed at the second privilege level; and identifying asecond base translation table using the second base address responsiveto the second address translation request.
 13. The method of claim 12wherein a first portion of a first virtual address included in the firstaddress translation request is to be used to identify a first entry inthe first base translation table, and wherein a first portion of asecond virtual address included in the second address translationrequest is to be used to identify a first entry in the second basetranslation table.
 14. The method of claim 13 wherein the first entry inthe first base translation table comprises a pointer to a first level-2translation table and wherein the first entry in the second basetranslation table comprises a pointer to a second level-2 translationtable.
 15. The method of claim 14 wherein one or more additionalportions of the first virtual address are to be used to identify a firstone or more additional levels of translation tables to determine a firstphysical address associated with the first virtual address and whereinone or more additional portions of the second virtual address are to beused to identify a second one or more additional levels of translationtables to determine a second physical address associated with the secondvirtual address.
 16. The method of claim 15 further comprising: storingattributes associated with pages in memory in a page attribute table(PAT); wherein the first level-2 translation table and second level-2translation table and/or additional levels of translation tables are toinclude a number of PAT index bits to address all entries of the PAT.17. The method of claim 12 wherein the second privilege level comprisesa user privilege level and the at least a portion of the program codecomprises an application.
 18. The method of claim 12 further comprising:storing a first virtual address and a first physical address in a firstentry in a translation lookaside buffer (TLB); and storing a secondvirtual address and a second physical address in a second entry in theTLB.
 19. The method of claim 18 wherein the second entry is to furtherstore the context identifier, wherein an address translation operationis to result in a TLB hit only if the address translation operation isperformed in a context identified by the context identifier.
 20. Themethod of claim 12 wherein the first control register is to additionallystore first translation mode data to specify a translation mode to beused to identify a first physical address associated with a firstvirtual address and wherein the second control register is toadditionally store second translation mode data to specify a translationmode to be used to identify a second physical address associated with asecond virtual address.
 21. A non-transitory machine-readable mediumhaving program code stored thereon which, when executed by a machine,causes the machine to perform: storing a first base address associatedwith program code executed at a first privilege level in a first controlregister; storing a second base address associated with program codeexecuted at a second privilege level in a second control register, thesecond privilege level lower than the first privilege level; storing acontext identifier in a third control register to identify a context forat least a portion of the program code executed at the second privilegelevel, wherein the context identifier to identify the context for the atleast portion of the program code executed at the second privilege levelis changeable at the first privilege level but not the second privilegelevel, wherein another context identifier to identify a context for atleast the portion of the program code executed at the first privilegelevel, and wherein the another context identifier is unchangeable at thefirst privilege level and the second privilege level; receiving a firstaddress translation request originating from the program code executedat the first privilege level; identifying a first base translation tableusing the first base address responsive to the first address translationrequest; receiving a second address translation request originating fromthe program code executed at the second privilege level; and identifyinga second base translation table using the second base address responsiveto the second address translation request.
 22. The non-transitorymachine-readable medium of claim 21 wherein a first portion of a firstvirtual address included in the first address translation request is tobe used to identify a first entry in the first base translation table,and wherein a first portion of a second virtual address included in thesecond address translation request is to be used to identify a firstentry in the second base translation table.
 23. The non-transitorymachine-readable medium of claim 22 wherein the first entry in the firstbase translation table comprises a pointer to a first level-2translation table and wherein the first entry in the second basetranslation table comprises a pointer to a second level-2 translationtable.
 24. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 23wherein one or more additional portions of the first virtual address areto be used to identify a first one or more additional levels oftranslation tables to determine a first physical address associated withthe first virtual address and wherein one or more additional portions ofthe second virtual address are to be used to identify a second one ormore additional levels of translation tables to determine a secondphysical address associated with the second virtual address.
 25. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 24 further comprisingprogram code to cause the machine to perform: storing attributesassociated with pages in memory in a page attribute table (PAT); whereinthe first level-2 translation table and second level-2 translation tableand/or additional levels of translation tables are to include a numberof PAT index bits to address all entries of the PAT.
 26. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 21 wherein the secondprivilege level comprises a user privilege level and the at least aportion of the program code comprises an application.
 27. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 21 further comprisingprogram code to cause the machine to perform: storing a first virtualaddress and a first physical address in a first entry in a translationlookaside buffer (TLB); and storing a second virtual address and asecond physical address in a second entry in the TLB.
 28. Thenon-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 27 wherein the secondentry is to further store the context identifier, wherein an addresstranslation operation is to result in a TLB hit only if the addresstranslation operation is performed in a context identified by thecontext identifier.
 29. The non-transitory machine-readable medium ofclaim 21 wherein the first control register is to additionally storefirst translation mode data to specify a translation mode to be used toidentify a first physical address associated with a first virtualaddress and wherein the second control register is to additionally storesecond translation mode data to specify a translation mode to be used toidentify a second physical address associated with a second virtualaddress.